Our son has had trouble sleeping lately.

You wouldn’t think that there would be so much stress in a one-year-old’s day-to-day life to cause him to lose sleep, would you?

Of course, when he has trouble sleeping, so do Mom and Dad.

He will just wake up in the middle of the night and start crying.

We didn’t know what to do.

We would give him something to eat, and something to drink, but still he would cry – sometimes uncontrollably.

One night we discovered something that gave him comfort.

I think it was about 3 a.m., and my bleary-eyed wife who was exhausted and near the end of her rope tugged on my sleeve, pleading for help.

"Go back to sleep," I told her. "I’ll take him in the living room."

So I took the crying boy into the living room and put a movie in the DVD player – Toy Story 2.

Suddenly, he stopped crying.

It was a miracle!

He just sat down in front of the TV and watched as one of the characters in the movie, Buzz Lightyear zoomed through the atmosphere into a strange alien world where he met his arch nemesis – Emperor Zurg!

As though in a hypnotic trance, our son watched the movie all the way through in blessed peaceful silence. And when it was over he watched it again.

I think it was on the third showing that he finally dozed off wedged up against some pillows on the living room floor.

Unfortunately, he still continues to wake up crying in the middle of the night.

Amazingly enough, both Toy Story 2 and the original Toy Story will instantly calm him down. I’ve tried other animated movies – The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, but nothing else works. Maybe it’s something in the music, maybe it’s something about the characters or the fact that they are toys…who knows?

What this means is that we have all become really, really familiar with the Toy Story movies. I think I’ve personally seen both of them at least twenty times.

If you have to watch a movie 20, 40, 80 times, I have to say that you could probably do a lot worse than the Toy Story films.

The more I watch these, the more I realize that these movies aren’t just for kids and they’re not just about toys. The story lines are about friendship, loyalty and dealing with changes in life.

The toys become best of friends with the kids that own them. They are inseparable pals that play together, sleep together and do everything together.

Later, it becomes hard for the toys to watch the children grow older and become less and less interested in playing with toys.

Eventually, the toys sometimes end up under a bed, up on a shelf, or donated to a charity – without a child to play with.

It’s heartbreaking for these toys, who are personified in the movie.

All of these repeated viewings have made me think about how our kids are growing up, and I know that my relationship with my daughter and son will also change as they get older.

Right now, I’m their favorite toy.

They want to spend every waking moment with me going on walks, playing together, reading stories. They get so excited when they know we are going to go do something together – and it doesn’t really matter what we’re doing Just the fact that we’re together makes them very, very happy.

Like a toy that will one day end up under the bed, I know that my days are numbered. My time is coming and I know that I won’t always be the center of their lives.

And it breaks my heart a little bit every time I know they want to do something with me, but I have to be somewhere else, working or doing something that doesn’t involve them.

I know that this period of time in our lives is a very special one and our kids won’t be little except for just a little while.

So, I try to make the most of it, as best I can.

I told my wife that I don’t really mind staying up all night watching movies with my son; because it’s time we are spending together.

We’ll watch together, laugh together, sing together, dance together, lay down and fall asleep together, side by side.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s time well spent.